Saturday, 25 June 2011

Pakistan’s first anime series inspired by Punjabi characters of Rahi

Punjabi cinema has really lost its glory in today’s world and thats mainly due the mass production of low quality vulgar films having nothing more than ill directed bloodshed and same overused stories on love triangles. But there was a time when Punjabi films had a great market in local film industry and Sultan Rahi was one of the biggest selling names there. Since people here didn’t have any home-grown superheroes; Rahi use to be considered as one for many people in Pakistan. This mainly was because of his brave movie characters and on-screen attitude & style that he carried for a long time.

Our film and TV industry is constantly criticised by many people for failing to provide any local superhero to the younger generation of the country and thus superhero in Pakistan means nothing more than Superman or Batman etc. The same problem was faced by the younger generation of our neighbouring country India, but even they now have a superhero in form of Hanuman or soon in the characters of Sharukh Khan’s forthcoming Sci-fi superhero film Ra.One.

But people here shouldn’t worry for themselves now, as very soon they will also get to see a man with ultimate skills, courageous attitude, inspiring life style, speaking the national language of the country and behaving somewhat like a common Pakistani man and that all in a great quality animated series or you can say a cartoon in other words.

The upcoming animated series named Chota Jatt is actually the brainchild of a Boston-based Pakistani named Daniyal Noorani who is currently working in a biotech firm there and this idea of his is basically inspired by the Punjabi film characters portrayed by Rahi a decade ago.

“Characters like Maula Jatt or Shera Jatt are the only icons we have ever had in Lollywood”, said Noorani while talking to Express tribune. “We are using Lollywood films as an inspiration, but we are creating our own original narrative that will contain a lot of neat plot twist.”

Unlike Punjabi films which just aim a particular market because of the language issues, Chota Jatt will cater the nationwide audience as it will have Urdu its primary language.

“I have consciously made the decision that the show’s language is Urdu. There are certainly references to Punjabi cinema but we have made sure that they do not merely have provincial appeal,” explained Noorani.

An important role in the series will be played by the female characters of it and that surely will be something different and bigger than what we usually see in our Punjabi films. Noorani explained all this in somewhat this way, “Punjabi movies often feature very fiery women. Rarely are they the damsel in distress. The hero’s mother is completely dominating. So I think there are a number of elements of female empowerment within the films.”

In the “Chota Jatt” series, I see women playing an important role, as strong as an ‘atom bomb’ in fact,” he said, making a reference to cult Pakistani movie Haseena Atom Bomb.

Though Noorani initially had plans of airing the series through any of the mainstream channels of the country, but was disappointed with the kind of response he got from there, and now Chota Jatt will be aired through internet as “Webisodes”. However as per plans of Noorani, he believes he will soon be able to strike a deal with mainstream television channels of the country once the series creates its own market value.

Work on the series is in its full swing now and Noorani is currently working with a collaborated team of people from Pakistan and Boston. Since the project follows the format of Japanese anime, Noorani also collaborated with a Chinese animator. “I tried to recruit people from Pakistan but found that nobody had 2D capabilities and the only company that did was working on their own project.”

Above we showed you the poster of Chota Jutt showing you the lead character of the series and below we are attaching a description based 40-second trailer which will further give you an idea of what actually this series is going to be.

The Recently released theme music, composed by talented DJ Abdullah Saeed who is also giving the overall music to the series.

You can also go and join the official page of Chota Jutt on Facebook , this will keep you updated with all its latest happenings and development.